I was pleased to be asked to sign this well-done letter by philosophers of science Craig Callender (UC San Diego) and Cailin O’Connor (UC Irvine), which is now public and taking signatures from any interested philosophers. From the letter:

In recent years, philosophical writing on areas such as climate change, technology, misinformation, and artificial intelligence has found audiences well beyond the discipline of philosophy and even the larger academy. Philosophy’s broadening impact has generated increasing interest from industries looking to partner with academic philosophers. Ties are now especially common between philosophers and technology companies producing AI products. These changes call for discipline-wide reflection on the norms of research integrity.

This letter is a call for philosophy journals to strengthen or implement new policies requiring author disclosure of relevant industry ties and conflicts of interest (COI’s). Without robust standards for disclosure of potential conflicts of interest, philosophical discourse risks problematic influence from commercial interests. Required disclosures are an easily-implemented step that can help protect the integrity of philosophical research and maintain the trust of the public in philosophical inquiry….

We propose that all philosophy journals require submitting authors to disclose any potential conflicts of interest that they may have, which would reasonably appear to relate to their research. Such conflicts of interest may be financial—e.g., paid employment or consultancy, research or grant funding, personal investments in relevant companies—or non-financial—current or former professional affiliations, unpaid writing or consulting relationships, in-kind access to data or models, close personal relationships with employees of relevant companies—in nature. Flagship journals like Science and Nature require authors to disclose a similar range of financial and non-financial conflicts of interest at the time of submission.  

I encourage readers to sign.